


Words on a Page

by Skeren



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-17 04:15:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5853787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skeren/pseuds/Skeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fairy tales are more than just words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Words on a Page

**Author's Note:**

> Written June 2005.

It was a free fall at first. Knowing that it was all lost that way was a form of ruin, really. There was no resetting this game, no taking back the pieces that were lost far too early and at far too critical a time. Pawns were not supposed to be queened and knighted as they reached the opposite side of the board. The King was not supposed to carry the final attack.

It should never have gotten far enough to drag him in.

He was the king of his realm. He was the Goblin King, and here he had been bested by one line. Bested by a girl’s story. A story by which she would never have known of him at all had it not been, and which was followed to the letter.

A fairytale. A story that was written once upon a time with a foregone conclusion and yet still he’d tried to change it. It wouldn’t be remembered the next time this story was to be played. They were all the same players, all but that one. 

Sarah hadn’t been a set player. 

She had been the girl, yes, but the girl always had the power to change the rules. The girl was always capable of taking what it was he offered her. She had the chance to be his queen. 

Yet those offers were not taken. Each time that squalling brat, just a lure, was what they chose over him. Him! He was a king, a grand man with a wondrous realm and a mystical palace. Yet they chose a screaming child.

No power given is no power received. He lived to serve, as all kings lived to serve, and the girl didn’t understand. He bent the rules of time and reality for her each time, and was still rejected. He’d had such high hopes this time. Sarah seemed to have almost understood, to have almost allowed him to serve her.

Then she uttered those words. She broke the spell he’d woken for her, and it left him alone again. His people were wanted, and they were given. The illusion was wanted, and it was given. Yet still she failed to see. She failed to understand what he was trying to do for her and for his people.

She was the last chance for him. He could feel it as his power ebbed slowly away, leaving him to watch from one of his glass spheres. He was a king, but a king was nothing if he had no subjects. His people were hers, just as she’d wished. They wanted no king. He was the Goblin King. He was Jareth.

He was little more than a fairy tale that had reached its conclusion, one that was long overdue. Nothing more than words on a page in a story that was long out of fashion.

He’d only be remembered next time some young girl took an interest in the worn pages of a play. But that… Well, that was a long way off. He would sleep, and with luck, he would not be forgotten in the haze of ink that was the mortal play.


End file.
